


I came to your side

by Anihan (Nakagami)



Series: Jim and John, and Moran watches on. [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Jim is creepy, Sir Boast-a-lot is NOT a bedtime story, the floor is lava
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-05
Updated: 2013-07-05
Packaged: 2017-12-17 18:09:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/870450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakagami/pseuds/Anihan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not with a bang, but with a whimper, I came to your side. </p>
<p>Never to leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I came to your side

**Author's Note:**

> Third installment of Jim being creepy with a twelve-year-old female John Watson. Mild references to details of episode 2x03. Takes place a few weeks after the last piece.

¥

Johann is perched daintly on the top of a wooden armoire when Jim walks in. She has a picnic set out in front of her, a full spread of pastries and sandwiches left untouched. Jim's presence - interruption - makes her frown. 

Still, manners must be met: "Hello," she says dutifully.

"Hello." He watches her for a minute. She stares back. When nothing else is forthcoming he steps closer, setting down a bouquet of roses on the bed.

Johann tries not to wrinkle her nose. Flowers. _Again._

"Play a game with me," Jim says.

Johann snorts ingeneously. "I'm busy," she lies. The tea party had been boring for the last ten minutes and they both know it. 

"No, really," Jim says. His tone is bemused and amused and probably C-mused by now, which Johann had only found entertaining the first time he'd said it. Now his multi-toned voice grates on her nerves. "This isn't a request. Play a game." 

"No thank you," she says, equally derisive. "I'm already busy pretending the floor is lava. So sorry, I can't get up to show you out."

A shadow passes over Jim's face - and then passes back in the opposite direction, first anger and then back to amusement, this time darker than before. "You know, I could force you to play."

"You could." Johann's packing up the tea items now. The cookies go back in the tin on the tray next to the china, and she leaves the tray on the armoire at the back corner where she won't accidentally knock it over. "But that's no fun for either of us."

Jim approaches where she's dangling her legs off the edge of the armoire. He is eye-height with her ankles. "I know of a live volcano in the Ring of Fire, just off the coast of Japan." Jim says it like a fact of life, like it wasn't a threat, and Johann's learned how to ignore that sort of idle Evil Overlord talk by now. "I could take you there," he suggests, more idle musing than a serious threat. "I could _leave_ you there."

"And get me outside at last? I'd be glad of it."

Jim recoils indignantly. "You'd be dead of it." 

"The price of a full life," she retorts, and leaps from the armoire to the bed with only a minor stumble on the landing. She climbs up to her feet again and puffs up her cheeks in annoyance: Her leap had shifted the armoire enough for the lid to shift and fall off the sugar pot. "Jim, would you...?" 

He waits a moment for her to finish the sentence but she never does. He steps forward and nods at the bouquet. "I've brought you flowers," he says, "because I was told it would make you more palatable." 

"Are you intending to eat me?" she asks, eyes sardonic and wide.

"No." He smiles, and this time the gesture seems genuinely affectionate. "I am intending to read you a story." 

"Another one?" Johann groans. She flops down onto the bed and lays with her legs in the pillows, feet on the headboard. "Don't you have a job? Shouldn't you be out, I don't know, doing something? Else? Besides bother me in my prison." 

"This is my job," Jim says. He sits with his back against the headboard. Johann puts her feet across his lap.

"What are you, a storyteller?"

A slow, steady smile creeps across Jim's face. The expression is worse than his laugh, the fake, creepy one he uses when he thinks she needs to be reassured.

"Yes, my dear, I am. And this story I must tell you is one for your own good. This is the story of Sir Boast-a-lot." 

Johann lets out an exaggerated sigh. She flops onto her side, incidentally putting her knees in Jim's face, and wiggles about until her entire body is laying across the head of the bed. She curls on her side to watch him from underneath a pillow.  

"You see, Sir Boast-a-lot was an arrogant man. He had one pet - just one - and he treasured him above anything else. Anything, even the other little boys and girls, everything paled when compared to his one little pet.

"And then a hawk came down and swooped the pet away." 

Jim's voice drops in volume and raises in pitch. "The hawk gave the pet to its master, and the master was delighted! He took the pet home and raised her in a room full of toys and good food and good clothes, and the two of them lived happily ever after." 

Johann doesn't know what he's talking about, not exactly. But she can guess. Softly, she asks, "Was the hawk named Moran?" 

Jim laughs.

The sound is terrifying. It isn't the soft laugh or the cold laugh or the 'give me sympathy' laugh. It is, for lack of a better term, genuine. It's _warm_. 

"Aren't you going to ask what happened to Sir Boast-a-lot?" 

Johann wraps both arms around the pillow she is lying on. She doesn't want to know. "What happened to him?" 

"Nothing," Jim says. He smiles at her in a way that makes her belly feel funny. She tenses up and pulls her legs out of his lap in order to curl around the pillow more fully, hiding her face in it.

"Nothing happened to Sir Boast-a-lot. Nothing, ever again. He lived and died, all alone." 

A whimper escapes Johann and she flinches at the sound. Her heart's pounding way faster than the occasion calls for. 

"John," Jim says. She looks up at him and doesn't make a sound. "You and I, we're not alone anymore. I have you now. And you'll never be without me again." 

She wonders, as she watches him get comfortable on the bed, as he pulls her into an embrace and pets her hair, as she listens to his heart beat evenly and with life-sustaining purpose, why the words "I have you now" sound less like a reassurance and more like a declaration. Like he's telling her no. _I have you._  

 

¥


End file.
